DEVELOPMENT OF IMMUNOTHERAPY TARGETING MAGNEPROTEIN FOR LUNG CANCER

1999 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 10671249
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Thoracic surgery
• Research Institution: SHIGA UNIVERSITY OF MEDICAL SCIENCE
• Principal Investigator: INOUE Shuhei SHIGA UNIVERSITY OF MEDICAL SCIENCE, 医学部, 助手 (30273402)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): KONTANI Keiichi 滋賀医科大学, 医学部, 助手 (90314153) ; FUJINO Shozo 滋賀医科大学, 医学部, 講師 (10209075)
• Project Period (FY): 1998 – 1999
• Keywords: MAGE / lung cancer / tumor antigen / immunotherapy

Research Abstract

We analyzed the antigenicity of MAGE protein expressed in cancer cells for the purpose of developing cancer immunotherapy of lung cancer. We attempted to examine the expression of MAGE antigens in tumors from patients with lung cancer, to induce tumor-specific T lymphocytes (CTL) and to establish lung cancer cell lines from resected tumors from the patients.
As a result, approximately 30% of lung tumors from 20 patients with lung cancer were positive for MAGE mRNA expression. Peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) from one of the patients were stimulated in vitro with autologous dendritic cells (DC) which were loaded with autologous tumor lysate. After 5-stimulations, CTL expressing CD3+/CD4+ were induced. They lysed autologous DC loaded with autologous lysate by 51Cr-release assay. Also, we established 8 lung cancer cell lines by grafting the resected tumors into Scid mice subcutaneously. Using these cell lined as target cells in the cytotoxic assay allows us to assess recognition of naive MAGE antigens on the cancer cells by the CTL.
The data suggest that MAGE antigens are highly expressed in lung cancer and have the antigenicity as a tumor antigen. The antigen is expected to be useful as a tumor antigen for therapeutic application of cancer immunotherapy.